zlacker

>>LinuxB+(OP)
Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save more lives than it cost, through the long term and short term effects of decreased pollution and climate change? If that's true, we have to entertain the theory that the virus was purposefully initiated by a time-traveler charged with averting climate catastrophe through the only means possible.

>>savana+k5
> Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save more lives than it cost, through the long term and short term effects of decreased pollution and climate change?

Climate change wont directly lead to death, we'll have to adapt, but there are models showing more food produced from climate change. Simply put, we don't know what potentially will happen. We highly suspect there are 150 thousand increase in death from disease due to climate change[2]

In contrast... there are 135 - 270 MILLION people on the verge of starvation now; due to the policies around covid (or >2% of the worlds population).

> “marching towards starvation” spiking from 135 million to 270 million as the pandemic unfolded. He stressed that 2021 will be catastrophic [2]

BTW these people are still getting covid too, lockdowns slowed the spread, didn't stop it. Most American's have already gotten the disease (estimates are that 10x the number of people have gotten it over the tests[3]). Given 25 million have tested positive, by the prior estimates, that means a likely 250 million Americans have already gotten covid [4].

[1] https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/

[2] https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12294.doc.htm

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-cases-deaths-...

[4] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

>>citili+w7
If it's 250 million people that have Covid-19, we'd nearly at herd immunity levels already, at least for the population that can be exposed to the virus.

The numbers should be going way, way down already, as there are a good number of people who aren't exposing themselves to the virus hardly at all (My wife and I are two of them, but it has to be in the millions of people that are limiting their exposure).

Plus the US has vaccinated >17.5 million people, so subtract that from the population and that 250 million estimate, and there would only be 60 million more people who could catch it (assuming no reinfections).

The newest data I can find on this is from the CDC and they've estimated that through December 2020 that 83 million Americans have been infected[1] (and I saw something dated November 27 where they estimated that 53 million[2] had it, so 30 million new infections in December). To get to that 250 million estimate we would have had to have 167 million new infections in less than a month, or more than tripled all the infections we had up until now. That seems very unlikely.

Also their estimate is that 1 in 4.6 of Covid infections are being reported, not 1 in 10 like that Business Insider article (which is dated July 2020, looks like they revised the ratio since).

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/covid-2020-11-27/card/vNksh...